Uninvited Guests
Prior to Act I of the Original Campaign, you can play through the short standalone module "Uninvited Guests", and the tutorial / prologue that takes place in West Harbor's High Harvest Fair.
This straightforward module will net you about 220 XP, and two pricey magic items. Before Exporting your character to import into the Campaign, put the items in inventory instead of wearing them.

Tutorial - High Harvest Fair

You will lose the Reptile Bane Cudgel from "Uninvited Guests" when you load a saved game if your character was wielding it. You can safely leave it in your inventory. This circumstance does not exist starting in Act 1 (i.e., after the Tutorial/Prologue).

If you do the Harvest Brawl before earning enough XP to level up (whether you actually take another level or not when you qualify to level up), you might earn slightly more XP for each "kill" depending on whether your character's race has an ECL (Effective Character Level) modifier.

If you lose to the Mossfelds, you can speak with Brother Merring to set up a rematch. Theoretically, if you defeat two of the Mossfelds then throw the first match, you can defeat them again for slightly more XP in a rematch.

If you put the Training Clubs and Light Crossbow in a companion's inventory, you can keep them after the Tutorial. Otherwise they are removed.

In order to accept Lewy Jon's bribe (a Potion of Bless), you must successfully Influence Bevil when you talk to Lewy, and then talk to Orlen. After you take the bribe, you can still dispel the enchantment on the pig, but you cannot then speak with Orlen again to claim a reward.

If you complete all quests except the one involving Lewy Jon's pig, Amie should have gained enough XP to level up and choose a level 2 spell -- which can be Lesser Dispel, allowing you to save the scroll Greta Starling gave you.

West Harbor Under Siege

This mission has you competing with NPCs for kills and it is theoretically possible to finish it without gaining any kill XP from the sheer randomness of war -- at any time, an NPC could get lucky and finish off an opponent you were working on, robbing you of all the XP. Or you could do the same to them. Theoretically, it might cause you to fall behind a level, but you can make it up by getting more XP per kill later because you are of a lower level. Try not to worry about it too much.

While you are still inside your house at the start of this mission, Bevil warns against entering Daeghun's room but there's no consequence either way. Before you leave West Harbor, you can ask Daeghun for help and he will invite you to take whatever you want anyway.

At the bridge, Georg Redfell tells you he has orders for you. If you ignore him for now and clear West Harbor first, you will not have to compete with him for monster kills. After you have killed the four clumps of duergar/bladelings, go back to him to formally get the quest to rally the militia.

The enemy clumps in West Harbour are marked as enemies, but the encounters with the West Harbor militia do not activate until you are close enough. Some of Amie's spells have enough range to hit targets outside of their scripted activation range, so if you want her to help (or you want to draw them away from the militia so that you are not competing with them for kills), you can use her Scorching Ray set to "many targets". This will inflict 0 damage, but draw one target to you at a time, while leaving the rest of the encounter dormant. Note that if you are using her Scorching Ray, you will still need line of sight to hit a target since the rays start from the caster.

Except the Starling farmhouse (which you can only access right before attack wave 3), you can come back to any of the open buildings in this mission later. For example, if you are not a rogue, you could continue the campaign until you pick up Neeshka, and return with her to Open Locks and such instead of bashing open containers and risking damage to treasure inside.

When rallying the militia, you can pickpocket injured militia before speaking with them. You don't have to use the dialogue option about picking their pocket (unless you want an alignment shift of Chaotic +3) to find anything.

If you do not have the Open Locks skill, clicking on the door to Pierson's house will cause him to answer the door. You can then dialogue him into opening the door to enter and recruit him for the Rally the Militia quest.

If you do not help Bevil in the Starling farmhouse just before attack wave 3, you cannot enter it later. If you do go, there will still be some fighting from wave 3 after you exit the house.

In the final attack wave, some bladelings will go for Daeghun and the archers. They start with injured and down to just 1 hp and can easily be killed by arrows or weak spells--and still give full XP (probably about 48 each at this point in the game).

You will probably be nearly overloaded with assorted loot by this time.

You can cache most of it in the cart near the barn, or the barrel in the barn. Ultimately, you will probably want to move it to Fort Locke, where there are several containers near a crafting room that is more conveniently laid out than at Neverwinter.

Don't sell anything yet unless you need cash: You might as well wait until you find a better merchant (Sand in Neverwinter gives the best prices), your Appraise skill goes up, and you get Grobnar (who has a Bard Song that can improve skills). Choose the character in your party that has the highest Appraise and compare the price they would get with the price you can get (especially if you have the Merchant's Friend feat). Note that just because you get a good price for things you sell doesn't mean the merchant's price for things you buy from them will be the best. Hold one pricey item for comparison between merchants to see who will give you the best price.

Do not cache anything in the Swamp Ruins as that area will be closed to you shortly after the Weeping Willow Inn and reopen only after you've talked to Duncan in Neverwinter.

Swamp Ruins

There are two floor traps in the ruins, but you do not have to go through that area.

Using skills to avoid hostilities with the Lizardmen at their altar gives you a flat 100 xp and no treasure. Killing them will probably net you 322 xp as well as a Dagger +1 and 2x Cure Light Wounds potions (unless they were used in combat).

West Harbor

After the Swamp Ruins, you have to report to Daeghun. Talk to everyone before leaving because after you do, their dialogue changes.

After you speak with Duncan in Neverwinter, you can come back for different dialogue and news that Bevil has been hurt.

4 comments:

Very good walkthrough. I'm playing this game again after 5-6 years, and I aim to get everything perfect this time. This walkthrough, along with the annotated maps in GameBanshee, are pretty much all I need.